czech for ice cream

Archive for July, 2012

A really interesting recent realization of mine: I can decide, like, everything! Only now that I’ve developed this point of view, I realize that I hadn’t thought so before. You just assume that you are the boss in your own life, that you get to decide what your identity is, what you are working for, which kind of relationships you want to have, but I discovered that deep inside, I didn’t believe it. I always had this feeling of being controlled, of having to listen to orders by … society? what my parents told me?, lingering in the back of my mind. (Probably a lot of it is still there, but I hope to evict it soon.) It really opens a new perspective on my life because a lot of feeling helpless probably stemmed from the fact that I in deed didn’t feel like everything was in my hands. Well, I still don’t, but this slight shift in perspective does change how I see myself and my opportunities in this world.

5) My good friends are training their 5-month old to sleep and to comfort himself if he wakes. So they ignore his cries at night (unless they go on for a certain duration and intensity = more than 10 minutes, a sharp upset cry vs. a “Hey, come hang out with me” cry) so that he’ll learn to soothe himself.

This made me uncomfortable. No, this made me anxious and sad. Babies need their parents to comfort them. When he stops crying, it will be a sign that he has learned that no one will come to comfort him. It won’t be a sign that he can “comfort himself”. Babies cannot do that because for their emotional–not only for their physical–well-being they depend on their parents. He will feel scared and incredibely lonely and, depending on his development, get attachment issues. Well, so I found this scary, but there are the comments.

Wow. That’s really your anxiety to manage, because yeah, it’s really, really, really off topic. The parents, kid, etc. are fine and happy, they are using a method suggested by their pediatrician, and their parenting choices aren’t really up for general judgment and discussion.

Anathema Device, I’m sorry the idea of sleep training a five month old causes anxiety. The idea of five months with no more that two hours of consecutive sleep causes me anxiety too. But that’s another letter, no doubt.

Wow, just NO. It sucks to not get enough sleep. For a long long long time. Guess what sucks more? Feeling like you are going to die. I am not exaggerating here, that’s how it works because babies litteraly cannot survive without their parents taking care.

All of this is just a huge stinking pile of adultism and adult privilege. Yes you can and have to criticize parenting choices when they are harming the goddamn child. It’s not “theirs”. It’s its own, but if anyone choses to take care of a child they should damn well do it.

As well as Captain Awkward’s refusal/reluctance to insert trigger warnings into her posts this reaction shows me I should overthink reading this site. At least proceed with caution.